Tag Archives | Physics

Zeno cat. A Zeno cat refers to non-classical states of light created by shining a cavity on resonance while it is forbidden to access a given energy level. The name originates from the Zeno effect, which can similarly prevent an energy level from being occupied by the sole fact of measuring its occupation frequently. The cat comes from the similarity of such a state with a Schrödinger cat state of light: a superposition between two classical states of light. The Zeno cat figure corresponds to the study’s experimental design. Credit: Benjamin Huard.

(Phys.org)—Constructing quantum computers and other quantum devices requires the ability to leverage quantum properties such as superposition and entanglement – but these effects are fragile and therefore hard to maintain. Recently, scientists at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris demonstrated a novel method for controlling the quantum properties of light by probing a superconducting circuit in a cavity with microwave photons to control the energy levels that photon quanta can occupy.

Synchronicity: is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner [to the observer]. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

If you believe synchronicity is simply coincidence, then you haven’t read any of the top experts in the field. The famous psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung coined the term synchronicity in the 1920s to reference the alignment of universal forces with a person’s experiences.

These forces have been sought out for centuries in many spiritual traditions as a means of aligning with the “flow.” This usually takes years of disciplined meditation, study, ritual or by other means to navigate this journey toward a harmonic “individuation.” To some the search is inward for the self, yet for others it’s an outward search for spirituality.

My first experience with synchronicity was on March 21st at 3:03am which is the 3rd month, 3rd week, 3rd hour, 3rd minute or 3333, on the equinox and the moment of my birth.… Read the rest

In this article Oxford Physicist Chiara Marletto explores whether we should consider information, rather than matter as the fundamental building block of the universe.

Information has come to play an increasingly fundamental role in our lives during the last few decades: billions of computers are now interconnected over the world, and our technology – and hence our survival and well-being – crucially rely on them.

It is much harder to argue that information plays a role in fundamental physics.

Traditionally, fundamental physics expresses predictions about where, say, a particle will go, given its initial state and its laws of motion. This paradigm has been the prevailing one since Galileo and Newton and has been extremely successful – allowing us to formulate deeper and deeper explanations of the physical world, of which quantum theory and general relativity are the current best examples. Yet, there are things in the physical world that this mode of explanation cannot adequately capture for us.

This artist’s concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies. Smaller black holes also exist throughout galaxies.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Are black holes the ruthless killers we’ve made them out to be? Samir Mathur says no. According to the professor of physics at The Ohio State University, the recently proposed idea that black holes have “firewalls” that destroy all they touch has a loophole.

In a paper posted online to the arXiv preprint server, Mathur takes issue with the firewall theory, and proves mathematically that black holes are not necessarily arbiters of doom.

In fact, he says the world could be captured by a black hole, and we wouldn’t even notice.

More than a decade ago, Mathur used the principles of string theory to show that black holes are actually tangled-up balls of cosmic strings.

We assume that effect follows cause. But could this most basic of beliefs be mistaken?

Mathematician George Ellis made his name focusing on some of the big questions of cosmology and relativity. Along with Stephen Hawking, he co-authored 1973’s The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, which attempted to describe the very foundations of space itself.

More recently, Ellis has been focusing on top-down causation – the process by which higher level organised systems, such as humans, interact with their own component parts. His theories have important repercussions across many fields of research – from consciousness and free will to understanding quantum phenomena. Ellis is also an active Quaker and was a vocal opponent of apartheid during the 1970s and ‘80s.

We spoke to Ellis about his theories, their implications, and the reasons behind certain resistance to these ideas.

What exactly is top-down causation?

A key question for science is whether all causation is from the bottom up only.

Did you know that there was a study conducted to see if someone from the future was here present in our time? Yes, it’s true! Astrophysicists – Robert Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson at Michigan Tech University did just that as reported in 2014. They figured that if someone from the future traveled back to our time, there may be trace evidence. Someone may have done internet searches of future events. The search dates would have been prior to the events and would stand out that way. If enough of these searches were traced to one user, it could reveal a pattern of advanced knowledge.

After exhausting their funds, the results of the study remained inconclusive. However, in response to a question posted on one website asking: “Do you believe communication through time would be possible?” I replied that “I believe it has already happened.” Only because I believe that our near future thinkers will be quantum computers with artificial intelligence.… Read the rest

The Alien God Species – The Watchers are HERE!

There is a species of extraterrestrials that are often referred to as being mythological, but, in fact, are very real. I call them “The Watchers” or “The God Species.” I know this because I believe I encountered one, and it altered my entire reality. At first and for the longest time, I believed my encounter was with a UFO. It wasn’t until years later that I deduced it was an entity, and that it was here for me. “Why me?” It’s as if someone lifted a curtain, wanting to reveal to me a certain amount of esoteric knowledge. I’ve read that this is rare but that throughout history this is the way it has always been done.

In most esoteric belief systems it usually takes years of disciplined meditation, study, ritual, or by other means to attain this secret knowledge. For the chosen few, the circumstances are frequently described similarly: a light coming down from the sky, an entity materializes often with a vision or a message.… Read the rest

They were studying plasma, which is the state of matter that makes up most things in the universe (though only visible in a few things, like lightning strikes and the gas inside neon signs, on Earth). Plasma is basically a gas that’s been charged with enough energy to loose electrons from the atoms holding them.

A century ago this year, a young Swiss physicist, who had already revolutionized physics with discoveries about the relationship between space and time, developed a radical new understanding of gravity.

In 1915, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which described gravity as a fundamental property of space-time. He came up with a set of equations that relate the curvature of space-time to the energy and momentum of the matter and radiation that are present in a particular region.

Today, 100 years later, Einstein’s theory of gravitation remains a pillar of modern understanding, and has withstood all the tests that scientists could throw at it. But until recently, it wasn’t possible to do experiments to probe the theory under extreme conditions to see whether it breaks down.

Despite being a well-established tenet of modern physics, the particle-wave duality of light can be a real mind-bender. This approach to understanding the universe was pioneered by scientists like Albert Einstein and Max Planck, eventually leading to quantum mechanics. Researchers have been trying to visualize light in both forms ever since, but haven’t had success until now. A team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) claim they’ve devised an experiment to photograph light as both a particle and wave.

Einstein’s eureka moment in the study of light came when he described the photoelectric effect. When UV light hits a metal surface, it results in an emission of electrons. Einstein explained this phenomenon by proposing that light can act as a particle in addition to a wave. We now know these particles as photons, but that term wasn’t coined until later. Subsequent experiments have confirmed the dual property of light, but actually seeing both at once would be something.